About a year ago, we heard that Nokia was dabbling with the idea of building solar charging panels into its smartphones, but after a bit of experimentation, it concluded that it simply didn’t generate enough power to be worth it. Now some new rumors suggest that the company could be reconsidering the concept, and it might just have something to show at the MWC this year.

There’s this company called Wysips, which has developed a technology for a solar panel that goes right over an existing smartphone screen. While it’s not quite transparent, it uses a micro array of lenses to bend light around a series of solar charging strips, supposedly minimizing its ability to be seen head-on. If that sounds a little odd, we’re with you there, and we’d definitely like to see just what kind of impact it makes on picture quality and viewing angles before getting too excited.

According to this rumor, Wypsis has hooked up with some smartphone manufacturer to start implementing this system, with plans to demo it at the Mobile World Congress. While nothing’s certain, Nokia’s the one name that has come up as a likely candidate.

Clearly, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about these plans, but if Nokia really is intending to show this off, you can bet we’ll be there to bring you on-the-scene coverage.